What is OCR?
OCR (optical character recognition) reads letters and numbers out of a picture or a scan. It produces text. It does not know if that text is the right model number. Extraction can then pull fields from that text.
Also called: optical character recognition
In plain English
A photo of a rating plate becomes characters you can search. Glare, a torn label, or a weird font will produce a neighbor of the real number. Treat OCR output as a guess until a person or a second source agrees. A photo of a receipt is not the same as the receipt in your books. Glare, handwriting, and a crumpled corner turn a 5 into a 6. Scan a few ugly ones on purpose. Have a person check totals before they hit the ledger. If the document is already a spreadsheet export, you wanted a file import, not a camera. Photograph a crooked, shaded page on purpose during setup. The clean sample will lie to you about accuracy. Handwriting needs a person. Test a coffee-stained carbon copy, not the scanner brochure.
How an owner would use it
Use it to stop retyping clean, well-lit documents. On anything you order or invoice, compare the critical field to the photo. Do not OCR a stack of IDs into a chat tool you have not approved.
Common mistakes
Trusting a single OCR pass on a crumpled receipt, then posting it to the books, creates fake vendors and fake totals. Do not OCR documents you are not allowed to copy into that tool. Do not skip the photo and keep only the text if you may need to prove what the label said.
A worked example
An appliance repair company
The model number is checked against the plate
This is an illustration, not a customer result. A tech photographs the rating plate. OCR suggests a model. The office compares it to the photo before ordering a part. One character was wrong. They fix it. The part order uses the corrected model, not the first read.
Related terms
Prompts and guides
Questions owners ask
What is OCR?
OCR turns text in an image or scan into characters software can store. The characters still need a check.
How do I use OCR without ordering the wrong part?
Keep the photo, compare the critical field, and only then let a workflow place an order or a bill.
Is OCR the same as extraction?
OCR reads the characters. Extraction decides which characters are the date, the total, or the model. You often need both, in that order.
Product guides are on AI apps for business.